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School of David Caruso Overacting

In a season that proved to be brilliant in so many ways, one of the highlights of Doctor Who this past year was the return of Missy – or, as the character’s usually been called through many, many appearances on the show, the Master. Fighting the Doctor (and saving him, when she’s not busy trying to kill him), fighting Daleks, simultaneously helping and tormenting Clara – Missy reminds the audience with mad style why she and her previous incarnations have always been the Doctor’s best frenemy. (Even if Davros might have something to say about that.)

But is Missy the best incarnation of the Master? Come find out! Here, we take a look at all of the regenerations of the evil Time Lord to grace the televised episodes of Doctor Who, ranking them from worst to best.

7. Eric Roberts

I always dress for the occasion!

Yes, the star of such classic films like Best of the Best, Part 2, Sorority Slaughterhouse, and High Heels, Low Standardsonce was cast as the Master. And yes, it was a trainwreck. The sad thing is, everything starts out okay – he’s originally Bruce, the EMT driver, who the Master’s ‘essence’ possesses, and that’s not too bad. But then, he becomes Terminator Master.

Um, okay.

And then, Camp Megalomaniac Master, by way of the School of David Caruso Overacting.

Riiiiiiiiggggghhht.

He’s not menacing. He’s not evil. He’s a joke. And given how good Paul McGann is as the Eighth Doctor in this wretched abomination of a story, it’s a shame.

6. John Simm

Anyway, why don’t we stop and have a nice little chat where I tell you all my plans and you can work out a way to stop me, I don’t think!

More of a shame is John Simm’s wasted run as the Master during David Tennant’s tenure as the Tenth Doctor. A brilliant actor – one need look no further than his brilliance on Life on Mars to see that – his performance as the Master starts out ridiculously well, right from the aftermath of his regeneration. The look of malevolent glee on his face as he wakes up, and realizes that he’s got the Doctor’s hand, and the TARDIS, and he’s won …

… it’s brilliant. And the gloating is well-deserved.

From there, though, it goes downhill. As he becomes Prime Minister Saxon (a storyline that honestly makes no sense), he goes from sinister to this weird, smug, frenetic “I’M EVIL!!!” mentality – it’s like he’s trying to out-manic the Tenth Doctor, and it doesn’t work. And that super-hyper “I’M EVIL!!!” portrayal carries right on over into his later appearances in “The End of Time.” I think if he’d gotten the chance to be cold and calculating – the yang to Tennant’s yin – he could’ve been great as the Master. As it is, he unfortunately just chewed a lot of scenery.

5. Anthony Ainley

Peoples of the Universe, please attend carefully. The message that follows is vital to the future of you all. The choice for you all is simple; a continued existence under my guidance or total annihilation.

There’s a pattern here. Namely, first performances of a new Master that start out great, with things only getting worse from there. And for the most part, that’s true of Anthony Ainley’s turn as the Master. Taking on Consul Tremas’ body in “The Keeper of Traken,” his Master is absolutely superb in his next two stories – the Fourth Doctor’s swan song in “Logopolis,” and the Fifth Doctor’s debut in “Castrovalva.” He manages to combine the panache and the charisma of Delgado’s Master with the at-times unhinged insanity of Peter Pratt and Geoffrey Beavers … and it works. He’s more dangerous than his original incarnation.

After that, though? It’s a mess. When the Rani says in “Mark of the Rani” that “he’d get dizzy if he tried to walk in a straight line,” it’s a fairly accurate description of most of Ainley’s appearances as the Master. Lots of over-complicated, usually pointless evil plots that don’t make any sense, lots of metaphorical mustache twirling, gloating, and monologuing that would make Syndrome from The Incredibles proud. The dangerous Master we glimpsed in “Castrovalva” turns up all the dials to 11, and shoots straight into over-the-top bombast for the rest of his appearances with the Fifth and Sixth Doctors. He’s not menacing or dangerous, but just kind of an evil buffoon with delusions of grandeur … and it’s disappointing, to say the least.

Oddly enough, though, in Ainley’s last televised appearance as the Master in “Survival,” he dials back the Snidely Whiplash Overdrive Mode long enough to give what’s probably his best – and most chilling – performance. Infected by the Cheetah People, the Master’s no longer interested in crazy schemes and chewing scenery – he’s instead stripped down to something primal, and it’s fascinating to watch.

If he’d only been more like this throughout his time as the Master, I think Ainley would be remembered as one of the character’s best incarnations. Instead, we only have some glimpses and moments of a great villain – and, unfortunately, far more moments of a “meh” one.

4. Derek Jacobi

Oh! Now I can say I was provoked!

For a Master who realistically only appears in two scenes of one episode, man, does Derek Jacobi own the role. He spends most of the episode “Utopia” in the chameleon arc-created persona of kindly, doddering Professor Yana, trying to help the remnants of humanity escape the clutches of the Futurekind. Upon switching off the chameleon arc, though, he reverts to his true form – the Master – and watching him so effortlessly switch from to “meek and mild” to “badass ruthless” in the blink of an eye is nothing short of amazing. For less than ten minutes, Jacobi’s Master takes control of the situation in “Utopia” and just utterly owns the Tenth Doctor.

It’s terrific to watch, and it’s a shame that this incarnation of the Master was so brief. (One can only hope that Big Finish somehow manages to work him in as the Doctor’s nemesis in their stories someday!)

3. Peter Pratt/Geoffrey Beavers

Predictable as ever, Doctor.

When the Master disappeared at the end of “Frontier in Space,” most regular Who viewers must’ve believed that would be the last they’d see of the evil renegade Time Lord. (Roger Delgado’s tragic death at this time certainly would’ve made this an understandable notion.) So it must’ve come as some surprise several years later during Tom Baker’s tenure as the Fourth Doctor that the Master reappeared.

But the Master certainly didn’t look as he did before, appearing instead as a hideous, rotting husk of a person. And gone was the suave, confident charm of Roger Delgado’s Master, replaced instead by pure, vicious rage. “Only hate keeps me alive,” he tells the Doctor at one point … and the words are spit with such venom, it’s chilling to hear them spoken. It’s a far cry from what the Master had been during Delgado’s time in the part, but it works perfectly, and Peter Pratt’s voice alone makes the character incredible to watch – and to listen to.

This version of the Master appears again a few years later as a foil for the Fourth Doctor in “The Keeper of Traken,” with Geoffrey Beavers replacing Peter Pratt in this incarnation of the role. He doesn’t quite have the menace of Peter Pratt in “The Deadly Assassin,” but honestly, that’s mostly because his makeup in “The Keeper of Traken” is a pale shadow of what was seen in that earlier story. But he’s still creepy and menacing, and his insane desperation to survive – and make the Fourth Doctor suffer – is still brilliantly nasty. (His more recent appearances in the Big Finish audio productions have been equally wonderful and nasty as well.)

2. Michelle Gomez

Say something nice.

Even though many avid Who viewers assumed that “Missy” might be the Master from the moment she appeared at the end of the Twelfth Doctor’s first episode, “Deep Breath,” it’s unlikely that anyone could’ve predicted just how great she’d be. She manages to take the unhinged, unpredictable insanity often seen in Ainley’s and Simm’s Masters, but keeps it from turning into camp, as they seemed to do all too often. If anything, she flips the “bananas” trope on its head at times – you get the feeling that her homicidally wacky behavior is often an act, and she’s far more calculating and devious – and in control – than she’s letting on.

Make no mistake, though – she’s definitely bananas.

However, one subtle nuance that Missy’s brought back to the ongoing Doctor/Master relationship is the friendship – such as it is – that she has with the Doctor. This comes across loud and clear in “The Magician’s Apprentice/The Witch’s Familiar,” where it’s evident that they have a deep, rich past together, and however strange that history may be, they have great respect for one another. It’s a reminder of why the Doctor’s always seeking to redeem his mortal enemy, rather than defeat him, and why – while Missy/the Master always wants to eventually kill the Doctor – there’s a certain admiration that keeps her from, well, popping him like a balloon. Missy’s a terrific addition to the modern Who pantheon of villains, and I hope we keep seeing her in seasons to come.

1. Roger Delgado

I am the Master … and you will obey me.

Sometimes first appearances are indeed the best. So it should really be no surprise that the reason all of the other various Masters throughout the history of Doctor Who are held to such a high standard is because of how utterly brilliant the originator of the role actually was. Roger Delgado – cast to be the Moriarty to Jon Pertwee’s Third Doctor – is nothing short of outstanding in just about every appearance he made on Doctor Who. (And there were quite a lot of them – Delgado’s Master is in every single episode of Jon Pertwee’s second season as the Doctor, and frequently in the two seasons after that!)

Charming, suave, and brilliant, Delgado’s Master was much the equal of the Third Doctor in every way. His schemes were grand and his ambition boundless, and it’s always entertaining to watch his character execute those mad plans with style. He also got the upper hand against the Doctor many, many times, and while he never ultimately succeeded in his schemes, he certainly scored plenty of smaller victories against the Third Doctor and U.N.I.T. along the way. And some of his failures were the result of his own ego and arrogance, rather than the Doctor outwitting him.

One of the big differences between Delgado’s Master and all of his other successors was his pragmatism. He wasn’t always out to conquer the universe, or kill the Doctor (although he certainly wasn’t adverse to those goals!). Sometimes, his goals were smaller. And much like the Rani would be in later years, there were many times he really didn’t care about the Doctor at all – it would only be when the Doctor would show up and interfere with his own Machiavellian schemes that the Master would try to kill the Doctor.

But there were plenty of times that he cooperated with the Doctor (sometimes willingly, sometimes not), and even with U.N.I.T., if it served his own interests. His Master wasn’t so much insanely evil so much as simply lacking a conscience, and that’s perhaps a distinction that elevates his Master above all the others. He had an immense amount of respect for the Doctor, though he was loathe to admit it. And even Jo Grant, the Brigadier, and yes, even Captain Yates and Sergeant Benton – they all got a nod of admiration from the Master here and there.

Make no mistake, though. Of all the Masters, his was the most ruthless. And he most certainly wanted the Doctor dead.

Roger Delgado’s Master is a joy to watch. The most insanely evil? No. The most villainous? Possibly. The most fun? Probably.

The thirteenth season of Doctor Who is also arguably its best of all time. Certainly, it’s got a lot going for it. In this season, you get arguably one of the best (and certainly the most iconic) actors to take the role of the Doctor in Tom Baker, and perhaps the best companion with Elisabeth Sladen’s portrayal of Sarah Jane Smith … and it’s in this particular season where the wonderful chemistry between the two really begins to shine. You also have Phillip Hinchcliffe at the helm as producer, finally steering the show away from its action-adventure period with the Third Doctor towards a more horror-inspired era heavily influenced by the Hammer films of the 1950s and 1960s … and the brilliant Robert Holmes as script editor. The show hit a creative peak during this season that’s been largely unmatched, before or since – imagine the possibilities if only this amazing creative team had been given the budgets and the special effects technology of the modern show!

Season Thirteen has a number of outstanding episodes – the fantastic “Seeds of Doom”, the delightful Frankenstein-inspired “Brain of Morbius” (a story that Ken and I like so much we named this site after it!), and the chilling “Pyramids of Mars”, which made our Top 5 Classic Who Episodes list. But pretty much all of the stories in this season are exceptionally good, with the possible exception of “The Android Invasion”, which mostly suffers by unfortunate comparison – put it in virtually any of Tom Baker’s other seasons as the Doctor, and it’d be closer to the top, rather than the bottom. Compare that to almost every other season, even including the modern iteration of the show. There’s almost always at least one clunker in there, if not two or three! So to have a season of solidly “good” stories, with half of them being standouts, if not classics … well, it’s impressive indeed.

One of my favorite Fourth Doctor stories – and another that I think gets overlooked from Season Thirteen, lost in the shuffle of so many good episodes to watch – is “Planet of Evil”. It’s the first real story where the Fourth Doctor and Sarah Jane Smith step away on their own, away from Harry Sullivan and the last vestiges of UNIT, and forge their way through the universe in a bold new direction. Like many of the Hinchcliffe/Holmes stories of this time, “Planet of Evil” cribs liberally from gothic horror stories – in this case, “The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”, with a more modern splash of “Forbidden Planet” thrown in for good measure – and puts its own Who-laden spin on the tale.

“Planet of Evil” opens up in the year 37,166, at the edge of the known universe, where a scientific team is studying anti-matter on the lonely planet of Zeta Minor. Professor Sorenson – the leader of the scientific team – is slowly going crazy, and while the rest of his crew is still sane (good!) they’re also being murdered by sinister invisible monsters (bad!). One of the last members of this crew manages to activate a distress call before shuffling off this mortal coil, though, so the signal is picked up by both the Doctor and Sarah Jane in the TARDIS, and by a military exploration ship. The Doctor and Sarah Jane arrive first, and are immediately blamed for all the deaths by the crew of the exploration ship that arrives later. Wacky hijinks ensue as the Doctor tries to convince everyone that what’s really killing everyone is an anti-matter creature, except no one’s listening except Sarah Jane (as usual) – and the anti-matter creature’s taking physical form through Sorenson, who’s apparently been busy drinking enough anti-matter soy espresso venti lattes to become an anti-matter monster himself!

Though “Planet of Evil” is a fairly straightforward story, it’s a good one … and it’s dark. The story really doesn’t pull any punches. The desiccated corpses of the science crew visible early on in the first episode make it clear that this is going to be a bleak, somber story. (You can see how those who still viewed Doctor Who as solely a children’s program, like Mary Whitehouse, would clearly be dismayed by Philip Hitchcliffe’s reign as producer!) The character’s lives are in constant danger, whether from each other, or from the anti-matter creatures lurking on Zeta Minor … or from the horrors exotic alien jungle, which is worth its own special mention.

Designer Roger Murray-Leach created a beautiful set for the jungle scenes that still looks terrific even when watching the story today – it’s a far cry from the typical “spray-painted styrofoam and tinfoil tied together with a bit of twine” cheap sets that unfortunately were all too common in the stories from this time. Done properly, with proper dim lighting to set the mood, rather than the constant over-bright lighting common to everything recorded in the BBC’s Television Centre … anything featuring the jungle sets is a treasure to watch. It makes you wonder what might’ve been possible production-wise in the stories of this time if only the BBC had been a bit more flexible!

“Are you pondering what I’m pondering, Doctor?” “I think so, Sarah Jane, but where would we get a coconut at this time of night?”

Another of the main reasons that the story works so well is because of the Doctor and Sarah Jane. Tom Baker, in his second season in the role of the Doctor, is starting taking the opportunity to truly make the role his own … and he’s paired with Elisabeth Sladen, starting her third year as Sarah Jane. Top this amount of time they’ve spent in their respective roles with the clear chemistry between the two actors – it’s quite evident that Tom and Lis have a great deal of affection for each other – and you’re seeing a Doctor/companion pairing that isn’t trying to figure out exactly what that relationship really is, as it does in so many other seasons. They’re best friends, and they trust each other implicitly. And this trust comes across not just in the acting, but in the writing as well – when Sarah Jane heads back alone to the TARDIS through the jungles of Zeta Minor, there’s a moment where it’s clear the Doctor doesn’t want her to go … but he also knows she’s resourceful, and she’ll do the right thing, so he doesn’t try to stop her. There’s several scenes where Sarah Jane gets to do far, far more than just ask “What is it, Doctor?” in “Planet of Evil”, and it’s lovely to see the many nuances Elisabeth Sladen gives to the character.

The other characters (with one major exception, noted below) bring a lot to “Planet of Evil” as well. Frederick Jaegar’s unhinged Professor Sorenson can get a little over the top at times, but he plays the part of obsessed scientist very well, and as he starts transforming into the “Anti-Man” – the Hyde-like villain of the story – you can’t help but feel a little sorry for the deluded fool. Also worth mentioning is Ewen Solon, who plays Vishinsky, the second-in-command of the military ship. Vishinsky’s an interesting character in that he realizes fairly early on that what the Doctor is saying about the dangers on Zeta Minor is correct … but he’s not always in a position to do anything about it. There’s a nice balance between military duty and pragmatic realism with the character, and the conflict he finds in reconciling the two, and he’s both fun and believable to watch.

Not that everything about “Planet of Evil” is always brilliant, of course. For as wonderful as the filmed studio jungle sets are for the story, things get decidedly less impressive when the story returns to the video cameras and sets of BBC Television Centre Studio 6. Apparently military spacecraft in the year 37,166 are quite minimalist, utilizing cheap glass-and-chrome furnishings from some IKEA knockoff store to represent a supposedly high-tech control room. (Sharp-eyed viewers will notice that this set gets a terrific makeover the next season, though, when it’s transformed into the control room of the Sandminer in “The Robots of Death”.) Also, the electronic effects for the anti-matter monster – the in-theory scary “Big Bad” of the story – while reasonably good for the time back when “Planet of Evil” originally aired in 1975, don’t hold up well at all some forty years after the show originally aired.

And then there’s Salamar, the commander of the military ship. Bless Prentis Hancock, who played the character, but he’s straight out of the William Shatner/David Caruso School of Overacting. (When he arrives at Zeta Minor to survey Professor Sorenson’s abandoned outpost, I kept waiting for him to put on a pair of sunglasses while The Who’s ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ started blaring in the background.) He’s just ridiculous in the part, and it doesn’t help that he’s been handed a ridiculously-written part in the first place – he’s all blustery pompousness, doing virtually nothing that’s helpful to find out what’s actually happening on the planet, and often doing incredibly stupid things simply because it’s the opposite of whatever Sarah Jane or the Doctor has just helpfully suggested. Salamar’s just a bad fit all around for an otherwise exceptionally good story, which is a shame (although he does add a certain amount of unintentional comedy to his scenes that’s worth something, I guess).

If you can find “Planet of Evil” on DVD, it’s definitely worth picking up – apart from getting to watch a terrific story, the extras on the DVD are certainly worth a view as well. The “making-of” feature called “A Darker Side” covers the production aspects of the story, such as the making of the aforementioned brilliant jungle set at Ealing Studios, as well as the evolution of the script from its initial concept to its final draft. Meanwhile, the feature called “Planetary Performance” focuses on the acting side of the story, including a lot of interesting insights from both Tom Baker and Elisabeth Sladen about their acting relationship, and what their respective takes on their roles where during this time period. If – like me – you’re an absolute junkie for exactly how the show was made during these times, these features are must-watches for you.

Is “Planet of Evil” the best story of Season 13? No. But it’s damn fun, and it’s damn good … and if it can be said that there’s a hidden gem in this outstanding season of “Doctor Who”, this would be it. “Planet of Evil” is definitely worth watching.

Agree? Disagree? Think that Salamar has been viciously slighted in this review? Post your comments below!